I'd be for a carbon tax if it replaced income or property taxes, preferrably both.

Whatever tax your "remove" is still going to need to be paid for.

So unless you make the carbon tax higher than the previous tax, then there won't be enough money left to pay for dealing with climate stuff.

That said, this might merely be a solution to get around Jevon's paradox.  i.e. Where it doesn't matter where the money goes, just so long as the commodity price goes up to prevent using too much "Fuel".

Jevon's paradox for instance, is that you open up more lanes on a freeway to reduce congestion.  Only to find that more people take advantage of the freeway, and you once again have congestion.

In that same way.  If oil suddenly became cheap on a per mile basis because our cars got 1000mpg.  Then we would end up using more Oil than we did previously.  Unless of course there was added incentive to conserve the fuel.

proposal.  I would expect this tax to start out in the house sub-committee as revenue neutral, but end up to a real burden on the middle class.   I have a very hard time seeing how this could be passed in congress.  

People who pollute less than the average amount of carbon will get money back, people that use more will pay more.  Businesses will have incentives to use less carbon.  Carbon-Free energy will become more competitive.  Why set up a cap and trade system that can be manipulated (see Europe).  Car efficiency standards are indirect and target only a subsection of our economy.  With the tax, the incentives to buy fuel efficient cars will increase.  I'm surprised that he forsaw such results with such a small change at the pump ($.13)

Assuming it is merely to get around Jevon's paradox, this is actually a pretty worthwhile proposal.

Who this primarily hurts are people who don't get a majoriety of their money from payroll.  (i.e. Stocks and Bonds)

And assuming they could get it passed

Racheting up the cost of carbon wouldn't be such a political football in the future

Since if everyone is minimizing their carbon output, that means that eventually whatever payroll tax does pay for now, the carbon tax will need to be increased to cover it.

...and gasoline prices go way up, revenues from the carbon tax will go way down, and lawmakers will be in the unenviable position of raising income taxes, so it sounds like a recipe for crippling the Federal government.

Since wealth is, to a great degree, a measure of the availability of easy energy, when oil prices continue rising (in a volatile but generally upward trend) we're going to suffer serious recession and, ultimately, economic depression, as our economy struggles to transition to a much leaner, less energy available world --

So the fact that revenues from carbon taxes will go down when usage goes down is not a special weakness of carbon taxes.  

In fact, the one thing you can say about carbon taxes (as opposed to income taxes) is that the certainty that people who have to use carbon fuels will not have many options other than to pay the tax is much stronger than the hope that there will be any great deal of profits or income to tax.

Indeed, to the extent we DO tax carbon and thereby propel people to shift away from carbon fuels, we not only promote a better environment but also a more economically resilient one.  Right now our economic overshoot is all carbon fueled--which means we are very far out on a very weak limb.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.